Friday, February 07, 2014

The Fascism Lurking Under the Winter Games

It's vital to pay attention, amid all the glitz and Olympic glamor, to what's going on
under the surface in Russia. The show we are seeing in Sochi this month is all facade, and what's beneath, as I've been saying, is profoundly disturbing.

The British documentary Hunted,
released just in time for Sochi, reveals explicitly the nature of the
beast beneath the facade, a political pathology that is being unleashed
in Russia now, today: fascism. Honest-to-God, unadulterated fascism.

One of the reasons I have railed
in the past about right-wing efforts to confuse the public's
understanding of the meaning and nature of fascism -- embodied in Jonah Goldberg's travesty, Liberal Fascism -- is that people would cease
being able to distinguish the real thing when it came along. Well, it is
on our doorstep in much of Eastern Europe now, as we speak, and
particularly in Russia. And hardly anyone, it seems, recognizes it.

As I've noted previously, the real red
flag when it comes to fascism isn't merely the spread of scapegoating
politics (focusing for now on gays and immigrants), producing
eliminationist thuggery in the classic Brownshirt mold -- it is when
officialdom, the government authorities and church leaders, not only
condone such behavior but encourage and reinforce it.

Watch the
entire documentary [below]. I am particularly struck by the observations of the
Russian woman -- a schoolteacher who is herself a straight woman -- who
has decided to stand up to the thugs as a matter of conscience and "self respect":

Right now it suits the
state and the regime to organize this witch hunt, because our economic
situation, our pensions, our salaries, our healthcare, and our education
are all getting worse. Understandably people need someone to blame. To
stop people from focusing their anger at the authorities, the regime is
igniting and maintaining this conflict and hatred. They are making
people fight amongst themselves.

When you see, day in and day
out, what’s happening, and how people are being beaten, hounded, how
they fear stepping outside alone, how can you not realize this is a
serious turning point for the country? This is a turning point toward
fascism.

One
of the more chilling moments in the documentary comes when the "Occupy
Paedophila" people -- who claim not to be anti-gay, only anti-pedophile, even though they are clearly entrapping their target with an adult man as bait -- threaten their gay victim by suggesting that he is
likely to be raped if taken to a police station, because they had heard
someone at one of the stations had been brutally raped in the jail. Talk
about the complicity of authorities.

And you'll notice how the man who runs the website that harasses teachers and gay-rights protesters describes what motivates him -- that is, having children and a family: "You become concerned with purity."

This is classic eliminationist reasoning, which is always about excising "impure" elements from society, cutting out cancers, flushing parasites from our systems (and all that accompanies that, psychologically speaking). As I explained back in The Eliminationists:

Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on certain distinctive
shapes. It always depicts its opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of
evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus
worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin
(especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the
body politic. A close corollary—but not as nakedly eliminationist—is the claim
that opponents are traitors or criminals and that they pose a threat to our
national security.

I am glad that most Western leaders did not come to Sochi. But that will not be enough to stand up to what is happening to Russia. Because fascism, once it comes to power, is never sated. The LGBT community is just the beginning.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.